Times of Brunswick, Spring 2014

Page 16

a former bruin on

Bloomberg TV

Adam Johnson ’84 Wakes Up America’s Intelligentsia A hedge-fund trader turned television news anchor, Adam Johnson ’84 is so much more than just a money guy. by katherine ogden

It’s

4 a.m. on a Friday.

with the baker of an innovative

weekends delivering firewood out

investment giant ING, and later

Out of the pre-dawn

new confection — it’s all on the

of an old Suburban and later sold

saw him co-found a hedge fund,

emptiness inside a

docket as Johnson readies his mind

two-foot wheels of Brie on Maher

MLH Capital LLC.

New York City skyscraper emerges

for a show that starts in less than

Avenue.

a perfectly coiffed, fit, gracious,

two hours.

Brunswick alum. Humming with energy, Adam

“I can talk to you now,” he

“It was old-school,” he quips, “before hedge funds were invented.”

It was a trajectory to envy, but Johnson found that it tapped too few of his gifts. In a 2012 interview

says. “Downstairs, I’m going to be

Hedge funds, indeed.

with WAG Magazine, he described

Johnson ’84 effortlessly welcomes

jamming.”

Thirty years out of Brunswick,

what it was like to run a hedge fund:

two visitors into an early morning

Indeed.

Johnson can lay claim to an im-

routine that even a farmer might

Times of Brunswick had to get

pressive, 20-year career in finance

fun. But you can only do it for so

up extra early to catch up with this

that at midpoint saw him reap the

long. It’s boring to sit in a room

former Bruin, who once worked

benefits of a $600 million sale to

looking at screens and all you do is

find challenging. Promoted six weeks earlier to a coveted morning slot at Bloomberg

“Stressful, in a word. Lots of

buy and sell.”

LP, Johnson offers coffee (famous-

“I felt it was not using enough

ly free) and points to the kiosks

of me.”

of breakfast fare (also free) as he

A pivot to TV five years ago

breathlessly rattles off the news of

fixed that problem, and Johnson

the morning.

says it was his early days at

Crisis in Ukraine, a missing

Brunswick that prepared him

airplane, a conversation about wage growth with a world scholar from Columbia University, and, on the lighter side, a live interview

14

times of Brunswick • SPRING 2014

to make the change. Adam Johnson on air with his cohosts on Bloomberg Surveillance

It all started rather fortuitously, albeit with some prodding by the protagonist himself.


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